The blade bent and wrapped around the nacelle of the turbine, flinging a 12-foot piece of blade about 120 yards from the base. DTE Energy regional manager Ron Chriss said GE, the manufacturer of the turbine, will be on site this coming week to make repairs and investigate the cause.

As crews continue to probe why a 400-foot wind turbine fell on a farm field, county planners talked publicly for the first time Wednesday about the incident and aftermath. County Building and Zoning Director Jeff Smith said he was out of town when the turbine fell, on Feb. 25, but went out to the site in Oliver Township on Feb. 29 with township officials.

“It gouged out a nice, big hole, about eight feet wide and three or four feet across." ...“A decision hasn’t been made yet on if the turbine will be replaced.” The company expects a “fact-finding” portion of the investigation to be completed in about a week, she said.

DTE Energy regional manager Ron Chriss said a blade on the wind turbine bent and wrapped around the head, or nacelle, of the turbine. “DTE Energy found one piece of blade approximately 12 feet long on the ground about 120 yards away from the base,” Chriss said.

A nearly 400-foot, 485,000-pound wind turbine has fallen down on a farm field at the site of the state’s first utility-scale wind project. Oliver Township Supervisor Larry Krohn said it came down at about 5:20 a.m. in the middle of the field. ...The fall marks the second incident in less than a week in which a wind turbine has failed.

A wind turbine located in Huron County fell over during a winter storm that brought wind and heavy snow to much of the state, but the cause of the collapse is unclear. The Harvest I wind project, commissioned in 2008, includes 32 Vestas V82-1.65 MW turbines.

Photos taken Monday show the blade broken in at least two spots. The blade, which DTE says is made of carbon fiber and fiberglass, twists overtop the turbine’s nacelle, pointing downward and hanging between two other blades intact.

A 160-foot, 7-ton blade on one of DTE Energy’s wind turbines sited in Sigel Township, Huron County MI was destroyed. The turbine was one of 40 GE 1.6-100 towers. DTE's Sigel Township installation was placed in-service in October 2012.

Buda said lightning has struck 11 to 12 turbine blades owned by DTE in the Thumb area, while another five have been jolted at the utility’s Echo Wind Park, grounded mostly in Oliver and Chandler townships. Add that to three more strikes that Buda said occurred this week.

But not all 70 turbines at the park may be in operation after repairs. Instead, DTE is building another substation south of Pigeon Road near Grassmere Road to handle power generated from the park. "We only have capacity to put 50 megawatts of the 110 onto the grid," Serafin said.

DTE Energy representatives said that 39 out of the 70 wind turbines currently shut down at the Echo Wind Park are ready to reboot and produce energy in Huron County. The wind farm was shut down in November because of a broken wind turbine blade in Chandler Township.

“Out of caution, all turbine commissioning and turbine operations at the wind farm have been suspended,” Invenergy says. “We are working with GE, the turbine manufacturer, to determine the cause of this incident. Following a GE blade break on Nov. 7, utility DTE Energy has also ceased work on its 112 MW Echo Wind Park in Michigan. Scott Simons, a DTE Energy spokesperson, recently told NAW that GE was performing a reliability test on a turbine when the blade fell.

The blade that broke was going through a testing period but hadn’t been fully commissioned, according to DTE. CO-84 was turning when it broke into the three pieces. Two parts of the blade fell right underneath the turbine, while a third piece traveled 80 feet and landed on the access road to the turbine. “As a result of the failure we have shut down Echo,” Chriss said at the meeting.

DTE has halted construction of the remaining 10 turbines and shut down the entire wind park. “We have ceased all work and operation on the project until we’re satisfied with what the root cause is and that it doesn’t pose a danger of any continued blade failure. We’re working with GE to determine the root cause. It’s still under investigation.”

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